The snake cube is a mechanical puzzle

Mechanical puzzle

A mechanical puzzle is a puzzle presented as a set of mechanically interlinked pieces.- History :The oldest known mechanical puzzle comes from Greece and appeared in the 3rd century BC....

, a chain of 27

27 (number)

27 is the natural number following 26 and preceding 28.- In mathematics :Twenty-seven is a perfect cube, being 33 = 3 × 3 × 3. 27 is also 23 . There are exactly 27 straight lines on a smooth cubic surface, which give a basis of the fundamental representation of the E6 Lie algebra...

 or 64

64 (number)

64 is the natural number following 63 and preceding 65.-In mathematics:Sixty-four is the square of 8, the cube of 4, and the sixth power of 2. It is the smallest number with exactly seven divisors. It is the lowest positive power of two that is adjacent to neither a Mersenne prime nor a Fermat...

 cubelets, connected by an elastic band running through them. The cubelets can rotate freely. The aim of the puzzle is to arrange the chain in such a way that they will form 3 x 3 x 3 or 4 x 4 x 4 cube

Cube

In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. The cube can also be called a regular hexahedron and is one of the five Platonic solids. It is a special kind of square prism, of rectangular parallelepiped and...

.

Variations

A variation on the puzzle is a Kibble cube, which is also a string of cubes but has slots on the cubes. There are also many different styles of the cube. It can be made up of wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

 or plastic

Plastic

A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...

 and can vary in colour, material

Material

Material is anything made of matter, constituted of one or more substances. Wood, cement, hydrogen, air and water are all examples of materials. Sometimes the term "material" is used more narrowly to refer to substances or components with certain physical properties that are used as inputs to...

 and size

Size

The word size may refer to how big something is. In particular:* Measurement, the process or the result of determining the magnitude of a quantity, such as length or mass, relative to a unit of measurement, such as a meter or a kilogram...

.

Etymology

The name comes from how the puzzle

Puzzle

A puzzle is a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver. In a basic puzzle, one is intended to put together pieces in a logical way in order to come up with the desired solution...

 looks like before and after it is solved. Before it is solved it looks like a snake

Snake

Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...

and when it is solved it is a cube.

External links

• Snake Cube at Mathematische Basteleien
• Snake Cube at www.jaapsch.net